One of the pleasures of the run up to New Year’s Eve is reading the list of celebrities who’ve died during the past year. You can gloat over the demise of people you always hated who’ve been taking up space in the world that you require for other purposes, and then enjoy fuming over the obligatory media tributes to those horrible creeps. I still remember fondly the death of Ingmar Bergman in 2007. That miserable old git! What a kick that was, I thought he’d never die! I bet he didn’t feel so pompous about God’s absence when he was choking on his last breath!

Of course, occasionally somebody good dies, and then you feel a little bad, especially if they never got their just due in the world. So, like a lot of pleasures, Celebrity Death Revelry can backfire.

I mean, Steve Landesberg died in 2010, and I felt remorseful, because I forgot all about Steve Landesberg since the old Barney Miller days, and he shouldn’t have been forgotten like that. He was good. He had that great wryness and reticence, and now and then would break out unexpectedly in a happy grin over a funny line well-delivered. He should’ve had a bigger career. I remember that episode when his character, Dietrich, flummoxed a lie-detector test expert by saying with calm certitude, “I was born long ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” with no change of heart-rate or other sign of having lied. And then there was the time Dierich helped a woman out with her violent-tempered boyfriend by pretending to be a deep-voiced, super-masculine rival. As the boyfriend pounded on the door, he called out a warning in a baritone impersonation of Gregory Peck that was simultaneously perfectly accurate and yet mocking of the whole Gregory Peck real-man thing.

He was able to play a kind of heroism, in other words, that seemed to have no ego in it. It was so rare, his modern-man heroism, that he confounded all the other characters and seemed, to them, unreadable.

But it’s not just Landesberg we mourn. Sadly, 2010 took a significant toll on the Forces for Good. Those are some pretty small forces; they can’t afford to take casualties. This year, for example, we lost three veterans of that exemplary comedy Airplane!, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, and Barbara Billingsly. Billingsly atoned for many years of sentimental momming in Leave it to Beaver with just one wonderful scene in Airplane! (“I speak jive.”) Similarly, Peter Graves never did much else to justify his existence, but he didn’t have to—he was great in Airplane! and that’s enough. By all accounts, he didn’t even know why the movie was funny, and had to have it explained to him, and still didn’t get it. (“Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?”)

But it doesn’t matter. Like Shakespeare said, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

Leslie Nielsen achieved greatness, in Airplane! and the Police Squad! TV series and the Naked Gun films, by getting what the joke was—his own square-headed hero persona from 1950s films like Forbidden Planet—and milking it for every absurd nuance. (“I am serious—and don’t call me Shirley.”) RIP, Leslie Nielsen! I hope he was as happy in life as he seemed on film playing Lt. Frank Drebin.

Manute Bol died in June at only 47 years old, and that’s a terrible thing. He was a beautiful young man as a seven-foot-seven Sudanese NBA shot-blocker, and that’s achievement enough for almost anybody’s lifetime. But then he went on to be incredibly virtuous as well. He was about the only guy who dedicated his life to helping Africa who didn’t make you feel tired, now that Bono’s ruined it and made it seem tawdry, boastful, and lugubrious. Why should Manute Bol succumb so young to dreadful diseases, when Bono still lives and thrives?

Well, we know the universe is all screwed up and run wrong, but some reminders still come as a fresh jolt now and then.

Harvey Pekar kicked the bucket at aged 70, and I guess we should be glad he made it that far, since he had a surprisingly tough life for somebody who got to be semi-famous. His allegiance to Rust-Belt values is impressive. He refused to leave Cleveland; he worked till retirement as a VA hospital file clerk, writing his American Splendor comic books after hours. When rich famous people reached out to pull him up into the big time, he fearlessly bit the hands that fed him. He either couldn’t or wouldn’t take any crap off Robert Crumb or David Letterman; he didn’t seem to understand the whole patronage system, and how it means you’re supposed to suck up and curry favor and stay on the gravy train that way. He relied on furious, compulsive productivity and aggression to get him anywhere at all in the underground comic scene. Crumb himself admits that that the only reason Pekar succeeded was his own idiosyncratic uppityness; he simply nagged artists into submission, made them work illustrating his stuff without pay much of the time, wouldn’t take No.

He had a good run.

There are some stars who were at their best when very young, but hang on distractingly for ages. Now that they’ve finally bowed out in 2010 we can go back and appreciate what they once had to offer. Tony Curtis, for example, was never bearable after he lost his smarmy pretty-boy looks which were the key to his whole persona. (Except for one time, when he played the Boston Strangler. He was good in that.) Later in life he became an obscene pudgy figure swaggering around in shorts and a bad toupee with a bleached-blonde Amazon-sized wife, refusing to shut his silly trap. But early on, when he looked like the most beautiful boy in the chorus and that beauty combined hilariously with a honking Bronx accent, he was a great American persona: the working-class kid who gets lucky and can’t resist all the goodies that suddenly become available.

He was endearing, and naturally funny, whether intentionally or not. His emblematic moment comes from the time he played a knight in olde Englande and said the immortal line, “Yondah lies the castle of my foddah.” But he was weirdly ambitious for “higher things” in spite of all his natural, lovable crassness that went so well with his sickeningly long curly eyelashes and Cupid mouth and lush blue-black hair. He was determined to make his mark as a serious actor, and actively campaigned for his best role, the desperate, scheming PR flack Sidney Falco in the savage film noir Sweet Smell of Success. But even at that, his logic was strictly working-class: he was enamored of the idea of speaking lines written by celebrated playwright Clifford Odets, and of acting with the respected Burt Lancaster, “because Burt Lancaster don’t work with bums!”

The end of Sweet Smell of Success is still traumatic because of Tony Curtis’ ability to channel total, clammy, cringing terror as he realizes he’s lost the whole gambit and is being handed over to the big fat sadistic cop with a reputation for prisoner-abuse. The cop’s been after him all along, and it’s clear—the way 1950s movies easily made clear, in spite of censorship—that pretty Sidney Falco is about to get raped with a nightstick, among other things.

Also great when young were Jean Simmons and Lena Horne. If and when you ever wonder why we’re stuck with certain people having long careers in the performing arts, take a look at them when they were very young and you’ll often find the answer. As a teenage actress Jean Simmons was riveting and beautiful in two key roles: sexually overripe Kanchi in Powell and Pressburger’s Black Narcissus and cold, vain Estella in David Lean’s Great Expectations.

She went on to be a major star, but her roles got less interesting (with a few exceptions, such as the incestuous father-lover and murderess in Angel Face, for example) and she was never as effective in roles accentuating sweetness and niceness, the usual fare for lovely girls in films. Her real power dissipated early. This seems to happen a lot with female stars. If you want to see why Lauren Bacall ever had a career, you must see her at 19 in To Have and Have Not. And just think of poor Winona Ryder, never better than in Beetlejuice!

Lena Horne always gets high praise as someone who just got better and better the longer she lived, but speaking for myself, I never wanted any part of her presence after her Hollywood studio stuff that ended back in the 1950s. I realize it was no fun for her, being a token black performer on the MGM lot, a shunned celebrity singing songs in glamorous isolation so her scenes could be easily cut out for the hateful Southern viewership. Rotten, but there’s no getting away from it: she’s another one who was riveting in her youth, when both her voice and face had a honeyed, hypnotic quality.

After that, no doubt she was still talented as hell, though people would talk about her fabulous singing technique a lot, which is often a code phrase meaning the voice itself is getting ragged and needs all the technique it can get. In her later life, she always reminded me of an aunt of mine who smiled in a big toothy way but was a mass of tension and old resentments and might lash out like a cobra if you weren’t careful.

There’s been such a high body count of Good or at least somewhat worthy celebrities in 2010, I’ve run out of time to take on the legions of the Rotten. But to at least end on a happy note, Alexander Haig is dead. Also Ted Stevens, Daryl Gates, Eddie Fisher, and many other vile bastards. Though they deserved to die much sooner, and managed to cheat the Reaper long after their rightful expiration date, the up side is, at least they’re dead now.

And I’m personally pleased at the deaths of several famous people who particularly annoyed me for reasons I’m too lazy to go into now: Elizabeth Edwards, Jill Clayburgh, Dixie Carter, Blake Edwards, J.D. Salinger, Lynn Redgrave, and Alexander McQueen.

Here, for your further enjoyment as 2010 limps to a close, is a list of additional Dead Celebrities:

Dennis Hopper? Unremarked on a list of dead celebrities, sandwiched between June Havoc and Art Linkletter? I’m just suprised there wasn’t more to say, that’s all. Good? Bad? Ugly?

3. Fissile | December 31st, 2010 at 8:05 pm

De mortuis nil nisi bonum.

4. Louis Cipher | January 1st, 2011 at 5:00 am

Three words:

Ronnie James Dio

5. DocAmazing | January 1st, 2011 at 10:04 am

Art Clokey, dead? I guess if you’ve got a heart, then Gumby’s clogging its arteries.

6. Ozinator | January 1st, 2011 at 11:51 am

Ronnie James Dio. Diagnosed and dies within a year at 67. One of the Greatest hard rock voices of all time and STILL to the end, added notes to his live performances instead of cutting or re-doing the vocal lines ( a needed trick by many an aging singer who can’t hit the highs)

A HUGE ego but it was matched by his charity.

7. Ozinator | January 1st, 2011 at 11:58 am

yeah, dlfjlasj,,, When I read the following, I thought surely Eileen would mention the most disgusting example of it

“You can gloat over the demise of people you always hated who’ve been taking up space in the world that you require for other purposes, and then enjoy fuming over the obligatory media tributes to those horrible creeps”.

Soon Kissinger will be joining Holbrooke in hell (fuck, I wish I wasn’t an atheist!)

8. Pig Bodine | January 1st, 2011 at 3:29 pm

Thank god for the war criminal Richard Holbrooke’s death. I hope he suffered in the end just as much as his many many victims.

And would it be asking too much for Warren Buffett and his partner in crime Charlie Munger to die in 2011? Because we’re all getting sick of these two bailed-out billionaire hypocrites. Billionaires who lobbied hard for, and profited enormously from the TARP bailout. We’re sick of having them constantly remind all us peasants who got nothing what a wonderful thing the Bank Bailout was. And if we disagree, according them, we should just “suck it in and cope”, as Munger put it.

Please let these two insufferable pompous asses die in 2011. Or least suffer horrible strokes that will leave them paralyzed and speechless for the rest of their miserable lives.

9. paul cripps | January 1st, 2011 at 3:57 pm

dennis is famous for drug taking and over acting, so drug fucked in fact, peter fonda says hopper, truly believed he was 98 percent responsible for easy rider..

10. Sledge | January 1st, 2011 at 7:15 pm

Most obnoxious celebrity quote of the year: “Bank bailouts saved civilization, so those struggling should “suck it in and cope”, said Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s partner in crime at Berkshire Hathaway.

The only people bank bailouts saved were Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett and their billionaire bankster friends, they certainly did nothing for anyone else.

Please god, if only you could make these two billionaire assholes die in 2011 and if it isn’t too much to ask, please make them suffer first, make sure it’s a slow death.

Throw in Lloyd Blankfein and a few of the Goldman Sachs Vampire Squids while you’re at it, and some of us might be convinced that maybe you do exist, after all!

11. radii | January 1st, 2011 at 10:51 pm

you were not fair to Tony Curtis … Jill is sweet, has her own money and genuinely loved him … Tony didn’t self-edit because he didn’t care – he was not pretentious at all later in life or most of his life, as a matter of fact … he genuinely loved life and people and yeah, he had some financial problems and marital problems and parenting problems, but even he used to say they should make you get a license to be a parent

12. Padilla | January 2nd, 2011 at 12:29 am

Nice one…

But what about Captain Beefheart?

Jazz great James Moody?

Solomon Burke, incomparable “King of Rock and Soul” (plus the father of 21 children, with 90 grandchildren)?

“I bet he didn’t feel so pompous about God’s absence when he was choking on his last breath!”

YES excellent thank you

14. Dr Buddy Tubeside | January 2nd, 2011 at 10:00 am

Short of a giant meteor landing right on top of 200 West St in Lower Manhattan, and taking out the entire Goldman Sachs staff at once, there are few things I can imagine that would bring more joy to my heart in 2011 than for something terrible to happen to that pair of obnoxious, in-your-face, bailed out arrogant billionaires named Warren Buffett and Charley Munger.

Talk about rubbing it in our faces, what both of these assholes have been gloating over all year amounts to nothing more than this: “We got bailed out, we got ours, thank you uncle sam for saving our asses, tough shit if you middle class peasants didn’t get anything, ha ha ha you bunch of suckers, stop complaining, “suck it in and cope” you stupid peasants, ha ha ha ha ha.

As a 2011 present to Buffett and Munger, how about a couple of acute myocardial infarctions, with severe pain radiating over their left arms, lower jaws, right arms, lasting for several hours accompanied by weakness, light-headedness, nausea, and vomiting, ending in a painful death.

Champagne anyone? I’ve got a bottle of Nicolas Feuillatte champagne, bought on sale for $25, that I’m saving up for the day that I hear the news.

Tom Hanks informed us that Barack Obama is a “wise, calm man who wants to get things done”.

That’s right, Tom, tell us about all the wonderful things he’s been getting done, like using AIG to bail out the “savvy businessmen” at Goldman Sachs, like getting our nation involved in that excellent adventure in Afghanistan, helping the corrupt multi-millionaire Hamid Karzai get even richer, helping corrupt pedophile Afghan thugs hire dancing boys, making sure Karzai and his brother can use suitcases to carry unlimited millions in stolen money out of the country. Because that’s what the war is really all about.

Tom Hanks, like his spoiled brat daughter E.A. Hanks (“Dear The Left”) is just another pompous ass who does nothing but take up needed space. Here’s hoping both of them bite the dust in 2011.

18. 4r328uju8 | January 2nd, 2011 at 8:31 pm

It looks like Mark Madoff took one for the team, assuming it is actually he who died. I have my doubts.

19. Ozinator | January 2nd, 2011 at 9:09 pm

Yeah Flaco but Hanks is also a tool. Forest Gump was pure propaganda making dissidents look more retarded than Gump. Sure sure, Spielberg. Cinderella Man was the same bastardizing but with the labor struggles in the 30’s.

SPIELBERG, you cunt! Leni Riefenstahl at least was dealing with propaganda virgins instead of the exceptionalism morons you have flocking to your shit. He’ll have a wonderful eulogy as well if the world hasn’t ended before then

20. Ozinator | January 3rd, 2011 at 11:54 am

It’s been brought to my attention that Spielberg directed neither movie I just mentioned. Mossad was just at my door politely asking that I retract all of my comments concerning the wonderful film maker and patriot. Sorry

21. Kommandant Karl Bopp | January 3rd, 2011 at 9:07 pm

In 2003, the war monger Thomas Friedman was interviewed by Charlie Rose and defended the invasion and occupation of Iraq by telling Rose that what Islamic extremists needed to see was this: “American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?….Well *suck on this*. That, Charlie, is what this war is about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia….. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.”

Thomas Friedman has never admitted he was completely wrong about Iraq, like he’s been 100 percent wrong about everything else he’s ever written or said, and yet he’s still alive, and still writing his columns for the NY Times, just as vile and clueless as ever.

Any chance that this year could see Friedman join his fellow war monger Richard Holbrooke in hell? And the sooner the better.

22. Skinner'sHorse | January 4th, 2011 at 10:04 am

2011 will be a better year if only for this reason: the reptilian Christopher Hitchens will finally, inevitably, slither off this mortal coil.

23. Larry Elasmo | January 4th, 2011 at 1:45 pm

I agree with Skinner’s Horse that one thing we can all look forward to in 2011 is the end of Christopher Hitchens.

And there might be another reason for limited optimism. Warren Buffett will turn 81 in August 2011. Time is not on his side. How many more turds can this old fraud shit, before he finally shits his last one?

Then all us peasants out here who did not get bailed out, will no longer be subjected to such brilliant gems as the following:

“Thanks Uncle Sam for the Bailout” (in an Op Ed to the NY Times) or “I wish Lloyd Blankfein had a twin brother just like him” (to Bloomberg news) or “I see no sign that Moody’s ratings agency participated in subprime fraud” “no sign of fraud at Goldman Sachs”. “No fraud anywhere, just a housing bubble, who could’ve known?” etc

To paraphrase Eileen Jones above, but referring this time to Buffett instead of Ingmar Bergman: I bet this old git won’t be nearly so pompous about getting Bailed Out by the middle class, when he’s choking on his last breath!

24. Siren Deep | January 4th, 2011 at 3:22 pm

People, be warned! Neither Eileen nor the editors of the Exile have any power to make bad people die, especially given the short time frame you allow. At best, if you were to gather millions of comments, all asking for a cull, the spiritual/tidal forces unleashed might tip the balance of forces in your favor, but it’s risky. You might tilt the plane against the good people. And Henry the K. would still write an article a quarter for the NYT or the WAPO.

25. El Drano | January 5th, 2011 at 1:00 pm

And let’s not forget the war monger Michael Ignatieff, former director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, as well as the many sellouts from the liberal class who supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Ignatieff defended the Iraq invasion on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross, in March 2003. He insisted the war was a “humanitarian action” that he supported with a very “heavy heart”, but according to him, there was no other option.

What a load of pompous horseshit. Yet so high minded, so typical of the liberal class war mongers who sold out for corporate money, safe in the knowledge that working class kids, not them or their kids, would be the ones fighting actually the war for them.

In other words the war makers were just being virtuous and high-minded, no one really wanted war, it was just a self-less action done for the sake of morality, that’s all. Kind of like Mother Theresa and Gandhi going to war.

There should be a special place in hell for “liberals” like Ignatieff who tried to sell the Iraq war as a virtuous humanitarian action.

We heard the exact same bullshit from David Remnick of the New Yorker, Bill Keller of the New York Times, and many others.

Strange how silent they’ve all become lately, or maybe it’s because we’ve seen through their lies, and stopped listening to them.

26. John Many Jars | January 5th, 2011 at 3:23 pm

There were some genuine losses in 2010, led by the priceless Leslie Nielsen.

For 2011, there are many existential scores to settle and I’d like to nominate halfwit ass-trumpet Thomas Sowell. Perhaps only JV in the grand scheme but consistently 16th century in his ambitious and stubborn ignorance. His “Pay your electric bill!” response to the Enron-ing of California (’00-’01) was waterboard-worthy. So please, something painful, humiliating, public, and final.

I went to see Dennis Hopper do the Hollywood Blvd star thing a couple months before his death. I can’t think of another actor or director in the Hollywood system that would make me leave my apartment to be a spectator to something so dire (and I live about two blocks from where that shit goes down). So, at least personally, it speaks volumes about what I think of the man.

By all accounts he was a on-again/off-again deadbeat dad, alcoholic, drug addict, asshole, egomaniac, political loudmouth, etc. but all that does little to degrade the small handful of classic films he left behind (nor does the crap cinema that makes up the bulk of his filmography).

Talk shit when you direct a film as great as “Out of the Blue,” as unsafe/career-killing as “The Last Movie,” and as influential as “Easy Rider” (the fact that I think Easy Rider is a hunk of junk is neither here nor there–oh, and it was later proven to be 95% the work of Terry Southern, so Hopper and Fonda were both up their own ass). He even turned a pulp cop drama like “Colors” into something far beyond its genre limitations.

I’d start listing off his great performances as an actor in the 50’s to the 80’s, but if you already hate him, why bother? If you like him, you probably already know. Even throughout the 90’s and 00’s when he became little more than a check casher, there’s a couple things that would stand out and remind you what he was capable of at his best (See: his brief scene in Jesus’ Son).

Anyway, he was old, now he’s dead.

28. GARY | January 5th, 2011 at 9:33 pm

wow this site has some nassty commentors…eileen does a funny article on celeb deaths and you guys bring out your death wish lists..warren buffett?..the guy bought stocks of companies that everyone else thought were going out of business and when they didn’t he made money……if you buy a house for 100k and sell it later for 200k does that make you a bad person….would you say “oh no that is too much money for my house”..get real

29. Courson | January 6th, 2011 at 6:38 am

Response to Gary #28, defending Warren Buffett:

Warren Buffett lobbied hard for, and personally benefitted *enormously* from the TARP bailout, as well as the continuing stealth bailouts of the Too Big To Fail Banks. (See Rolfe Winkler on “Buffett’s Betrayal” as well as Barry Ritholtz’s “Dear Uncle Sucker”, and Ritholtz happens to be a Republican.)

Also, as a leading shareholder, Buffett defended Goldman Sachs and claimed to see no sign of fraud there, even going so far as to wish that Lloyd Blankfein had a twin brother.

And as a leading shareholder of Moody’s, he claimed that there was no sign of fraud at Moody’s ratings agency, despite the fact that it was one of the worst offenders in giving Triple A ratings to the toxic subprime garbage being peddled by the banksters.

Show me a person who idolizes Warren Buffett and I will show you a person who has been completely brainwashed by the bankster friendly, corporate media, and is incapable of thinking for themselves.

And until ordinary people start to see through these lies, there will continue to be a massive transfer of wealth away from the middle class to enrich the billionaire class, until the middle class has been completely wiped out.

30. required | January 6th, 2011 at 7:52 pm

Wow, i wasn’t aware even half of these people were dead. For me 2010’s greatest loss is Satoshi Kon, Perfect blue was amazing and Paprika shits all over inception’s shallow SFX videogame world.

31. campbell gordon | January 7th, 2011 at 8:53 am

Yes, leave your death wish lists at home. can’t you people stand th just think well of someone? Sheesh.

(Winona Ryder was awfully good in her appearance on “Friends”, though. Wait for the end… )

32. Larry Elasmo | January 7th, 2011 at 12:42 pm

That’s right, can’t we all just get along? Just one big happy family consisting of billionaires and peasants, holding hands and singing kumbaya. Let the billionaires keep ripping us off, don’t get angry, let Jon Stewart keep us laughing. And once the middle class has been annihilated, maybe we can have another big rally in DC and walk around dressed in clown costumes, holding up funny signs.

33. darthfader | January 7th, 2011 at 11:33 pm

Oh, no bones about it, anyone who killed Henry Kissinger would be a hero.

34. Sprout Penn | January 8th, 2011 at 6:44 am

Let’s try to put this austerity lie into perspective: think about it this way: when the large banks speculated and lost every penny, all of sudden politicians were able to find unlimited billions (and by now trillions) of taxpayer money in order to bail them out. Yet no bankster was prosecuted or even fired and they got to keep all those billions for themselves and their cronies, i.e., the politicians who are bought and paid for by the banksters.

That the banks paid back the Bailout money is just another one of the vicious lies propagated by the pro-bankster, corporate media.

So. When the banksters and their bought-off politicians saw how easy it was to pull off the Bailout swindle: when they saw that the American people were not revolting and many of them were so stupid they actually believed the politician and bankster lies that the Bailout money was paid back, at this point they figured they might as well go one step further and steal everything the American people have. Why not, because the dumbed down majority would either accept it or be too stupid and ignorant to revolt.

And so that brings us to “austerity”, which you will notice means austerity for everyone, that is, everyone except the elites (the banksters, the bought-off politicicans who work for them, and the pro-bankster shills in the corporate media). Because austerity will not apply to these criminals, what it will mean is more money for themselves.

Austerity is nothing other than theft from the people so the banksters further enrich themselves by gutting what is left of the FDR’s New Deal state, including social security, and medicare.

Think of it this way: social security is an account payable by the US government. It can only be insolvent if the US government itself is insolvent and defaults on its Treasury bonds. If this was a large bank that had speculated and lost $5 trillion, the US government would find the money to bail them out within 24 hours. They’re cutting social security because they know can get away with it, and they know they can get the ignorant public to accept it.

In the end this will lead to two classes of people in America: a billionaire class who will become even richer through austerity measures, and a peasant class (the target of austerity), consisting of everyone else.

In other words what the USA will become is financial oligarchy, also known as a kleptocracy or a banana republic. It’s almost there and austerity will be the last stage, unless the people finally wise up and revolt.

35. DarthFurious | January 8th, 2011 at 11:06 am

Sorry people, but all these death wishes are just intolerable. And, I might humbly add, downright unchristian. I refuse to lower myself to this childish envying of the wealthy and powerful. I don’t want to see any of these hard-working americans jailed, let alone executed. This country was built on an ideal: that ideal is Justice. And that’s all any true patriotic american really wants. Not handouts. Not free money (god forbid). Just Justice. And so, in this most noble of american spirits, and without further ado, I present my list of –

People Who I Wish Would Get Testicular Cancer in 2011 (in alphabetical order)

I think that’s just about everyone. I had to compact quite a few to organizational listings; too many names to be listed individually. If I missed anyone, my apologies. Keep close to your heart the knowledge that even though you’re not here in name, you are none the less present in spirit.

Dove sta memora…

36. DarthFurious | January 8th, 2011 at 11:22 am

And Blake Edwards? Are you fucking kidding? “A Shot in the Dark” alone guarantees his entry into Valhalla. Shame on you Eileen.

Shame on you.

37. rosemerry | January 9th, 2011 at 1:09 pm

to Darth furious

How did you forget Rupert Murdoch??????

What about GW Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, John Yoo, A.Gonzalez, Wolfowitz………

Happy 2011!!!

38. Thomas | January 9th, 2011 at 5:53 pm

If I had the inclination, time or skill I would make a graph of this page. The X axis would represent the page, running from top to bottom along the horizontal, while the Y axis would represent the level of irony present. The line would remain near the very top, representing dangerously high levels of irony, until the end of Eileen’s article, and would then plunge to rock bottom from comment one, showing a brief flicker of life at comment 24, before returning to the horizontal with just the one last doomed sally upwards for DarthFurious’s noble effort at comment #35.

39. DarthFurious | January 9th, 2011 at 7:37 pm

Well I didn’t get them by name but I got them all by category.

40. Dinky Wang | January 16th, 2011 at 5:36 pm

Darth, I’m 95% behind your list of people we all need to die horribly and painfully.

I agree with Darth Furious: Eileen Jones’list is utterly understandable, but I don’t dig her pleasure for the death of Blake Edwards. I can understand Bergman or Salinger or Dixie Carter but Blake Edwards did some great movies and in my opinion doesn’t deserve this contempt. Anyway, it would be interesting if Jones writes more about that. She persuaded me against many other movies or actors (I loved her distruction of Hereafter for example), so I’d like to know her reasons.

42. Django | June 11th, 2011 at 1:43 pm

Between his classic Forbidden Planet persona and his later comedic turn, Leslie Nielson had a great part as a psychotic Pinkerton man, in the ’60s spaghetti western FOUR RODE OUT. He just about sweats pure violence. RIP

Leave a Comment

(Open to all. Comments can and will be censored at whim and without warning.)

Listen to the Radio War Nerd podcast [subscribe here] with guest Gunnar Hrafn Jonsson of Iceland Public Radio on the massacre in Orlando and how online Islamic State jihadis are dealing with battlefield defeats and the shrinking caliphate. Subscribe to Radio War Nerd through the show’s Patreon page.

The political establishment’s racist, authoritarian reaction to the 1992 LA riots—blaming broken black families, massing cops and troops, and Ron Paul’s advice to his family on how to kill black “animals” and get away with it…